JANUARY MEETING TO HOST LOCAL RAILROAD OFFICIALS

The January meeting of the Chapter, National Railway Historical Society will be held on Friday, January 28th (This is a change in the meeting date since our guests will be attending a meeting of their own on our regular meeting night) The meeting will be held at 8:00 pm at the Fire Hall NW, 3rd & Glisan. Our special guests will be Mr. N.S. Westergard, VicePresident and General Manager of the Spokane, Portland and Ry. and John G. Melonos, assistant to the general manager of the SP&S. Also present will be William Crosbie, head of passenger department of the SP&S, and PNW member Jack Jones, manager of the Portland Terminal Railroad Company (NPT). Several other railroad officials have been invited but at this writing none have answered. The meeting will feature a slide show by Clayton Snyder of Lincolnwood, IL, a delegate to the 1965 Convention in Portland. The slide show is titled “Convention as seen by a delegate” For those who worked at the convention this is a chance to see on film how busy you were and how everything worked out. The local railroad officials, without who’s cooperation the convention would not have been a success, will get a chance to see what their work accomplished also. Refreshments will be served. An invitation has been extended to Tacoma Chapter members to attend. We are expecting a good turnout of local members, so don’t disappoint us.

FROM THE EDITORS DESK AGAIN Getting out a paper is no picnic. If we print jokes, people say we are silly. If we clip things from other paper, we are too lazy to write them ourselves. If we don’t print every word of all contributions we don’t appreciate genius. If we print them, the columns are filled with junk. If we make a change in the other fellow’s writing, we are too critical. If we don’t we are blamed for poor editing. Now, probably someone will say we lifted this from some other sheet. We did! Seriously. As was announced at the last meeting, there are a few conditions connected with my being editor for one more year. Being in the last year of college, I don’t have the time necessary to devote to the Trainmaster which I would like to have, therefore the content for next years Trainmaster will be what the member’s submit. If nothing comes in then the Trainmaster will be just a meeting notice. As you can see, this month’s Trainmaster is bigger than usual because the response from members has been excellent. Also we hope to resume photos, along with some small quizzes such as the one on reporting marks in this issue. I can’t read all the newspapers, so cut out an interesting articles and send them in, it may be one I didn’t see. My special thanks this month to Jack Norton for the press work, and Jack Holst, Miln Gillespie, and our Canadian reporter Bob Gevert, secretary of the West Coast Railway Association, for this months news. OLD CAR MOTOR WANTED FOR SPEEDER A Brooks-Scanlon speeder owned by several PNW members and now kept at the Trolley Park is in need of a motor. If anyone has an old car motor they may wish to donate or sell cheap, should be a six cylinder- Ford or Plymouth/Dodge, please contact Jack Holst. BAD WEATHER HITS RAILROADS ONCE MORE The Christmas Week floods of last year were once more remembered when bad weather hit ’s railroads again this year. Minor flooding and slides were reported by several railroads with Southern Pacific getting the worst of it. The Cascade was cancelled 3 days because of the slides on the line and extreme snow fall over southern Oregon and northern California. The Union Pacific’s Kent branch which was hard hit by last years floods will not be rebuilt. All stranded cars were hauled out by trucks to the mainline. Car movement on the isolated sections was accomplished by several small industrial switchers which were trucked into the tracks. THE YAKUTAT & SOUTHERN RAILROAD By E.M. McCracken If you’ve never heard of the Yakutat & Southern Railroad, it is not surprising. It is not one of the world’s best known railroads and a great many people, both in Alaska and out, are totally ignorant of this road, which has a name almost as long as its tracks. Here are some of the Yakutat & Southerns outstanding features, unique, but for the most part unenvied by other roads: It is perhaps the only railroad in the country that was built for the exclusive purpose of carrying raw fish. It has been carrying fish, and not much else in the way of pay load, for very nearly sixty years. As a result, the railroad operates only during the fishing season in the summer. This lasts three months out of the year, at the very most. The railroad’s main line starts on a cannery wharf and ends eleven miles in the brush on an uninhabited river bank. The Yakutat & Southern may be the only railroad in the world that runs by the moon rather than the sun. Its schedule is geared to the time of high tide on the Situk River. That is the end of the line, where it picks up its cargo of fish, and the fish scow can only unload there at high tide. Passengers and their effects ride free on this road. There are no tickets you get on and go, if you have the nerve. Some of the world’s most magnificent mountain scenery is visible from the train, but few of the passengers look at it. They are too busy watching for a soft spot to land in the event the train jumps the track, which it does frequently. Yakutat is a fishing town on Yakutat Bay at the extreme northwest corner of the Alaska Panhandle. It was one of the most isolated places in Alaska at one time. In 1903, F.S. Stimson of Seattle and some associates incorporated the Stimson Lumber Co. and the Yakutat & Southern Railroad, with the announced intention of operating a salmon cannery, a sawmill, a railroad, and a general store. They did all four, but the railroad and sawmill seem to come first, the former to haul in the lumber to build the cannery, wharves and other necessary structures. The sawmill have a capacity of 30,000 board feet a day, and an adjacent planing mill could turn out 5,000 ft. a day. Once the cannery got into operation, which was in the season of 1904, the sawmill turned out shooks for the wooden cases in which the cans were packed in those years. The original company carried on the operation for a number of years. Then it was taken over by the Gorman & Company, which had a number of salmon canneries in Southeast Alaska. In 1913 it was sold to Libby, McNeill and Libby, the big food packing firm which also had a string of Alaska canneries. The present owners, Bellingham Canning Company, bought the property from Libby in 1951. During all these years the Yakutat & Southern has puffed, chugged and groaned back and forth each summer between Yakutat and Situk, carrying fishermen and their boats and gear to the river and returning with salmon. There have been some changes in the rolling stock as the years went by, and in the line itself. In the early days there was a seven-mile branch to Lost River, but was abandoned when the automobile took its place. The Yakutat & Southern is a standard gauge road, and the original motive power was a Heisler geared locomotive that was said to have been discarded by the New York Elevated Railroad when the line was electrified. The Heisler proved unsuited to the need of the Y & S and was scrapped-its bell now rings at the company mess hall (See comment by our Heisler expert Jack Holst at end of article) Its place was taken by a Lima 2-6-2 of the cabbage-stack variety so common to western logging railroads. At some early date the company acquired a wooden, open platform coach built by the now long defunct Hollingsworth Company of Wilmington, Delaware. In it passengers on the Y&S road in comparative style and comfort in years gone by. What is left of the coach now stands in the weedgrown and unused yard along with the remains of a couple of flat cars, some gondola cars, a pair of nearly disintegrated Plymouth switch engines, and the remains of a nineteen thirtyish Packard flanged-wheel sedan. An economy drive following World War II spelled the end of service for the Lima. It burned two tons of coal on the round trip to the Situk and was retired about 1949 in favor of a make-shift steeple jack-type gas engine using the wheels of the old Heisler. Both this contrivance and the Lima now sit rusting in the engine house. Today the line’s operating rolling stock consists of a Chevrolet truck with flanged wheels and a big box on the back plus a home made bogy-type gondola. Almost anyone around the cannery who can drive a truck and swing a sledge is likely to be engineer. Howard Trissel handled the trottle on one of my two excursion, Guy Mallott’s son, the mayor of Yakutat, on the other. We left on one trip at about ten-thirty in the morning. “How long will the trip take,” asked a young Indian girl who was riding just for something to do. “About half an hour each way,” Trissel answered. Then he added: “That doesn’t count derails-we always have two or three.” Trissel yelled “All ‘board” in the time-honored manner of railroad conductors. Three Indian girls, a commercial fisherman and I climbed onto the gondola car and the back of the truck. Slowly the “Trail Blazer”-one of several things the outfit is called locally-ground its way up from the dock to the level of the plain. At the top there is a wye with one leg branching off to the left. Of this wye Trissel had said, “It’s always good for a derail or two”. He was right. Just beyond the far leg of the wye the engine jumped the track. Trissel said some things and got out and pounded the rerailers under the front wheels. As I was taking some picture of this operation I look up and saw a sign painted on the side of the adjacent but now unused engine house: Notice Private Property Anyone using this railroad Does so at his own risk. The risk was considerable because no sooner had the train started again that it jumped the track once more. Trissel some more things as though he really meant them and some men working on a road near by helped get the train rolling again. The trains of other railroads roll, glide, fly or dash to their destination. The Yakutat and Southern rocks and shudders every inch of the way. Every bridge, every switch point and every grade crossing is the engineer’s cue to slow to a crawl. Maintenance has been mostly non-existent for a long time. The moss-covered ties are rotted, the tracks sprung. At the end of the line, at Situk, there is a diminutive armstrong turntable, used to turn the truck. Trissel pushed the gondola car to the tiny dock on the river bank and spotted it under a chute there. We didn’t start back at once. We waited, patiently or impatiently, beside the track for perhaps half an hour. Then a motor scow came up the river from the direction of the ocean and tied up at the dock. Its cargo of fish, a very few fish was soon unloaded by a conveyor belt which carried them to the dock and another belt which dumped them into the chute above the gondola car. They plopped lonesomely into the car, and we were ready to start back. The engineer and I, with the help of the crew of the scow, loaded a cumbersome skiff on top of the gondola car. An Indian family, returning to town from its fishing camp down the river, loaded carton after carton of belongings, as well as bedding rolls, a dog and cat, into the back of the truck. We all climbed aboard. We inched across the bridge, the longest on the line, under which salmon were swimming and jumping. We swashed through thickets and berry bushed, the passengers ducking under overhanging limbs of trees. Nobody got brushed off the train, and the train stayed on the track at least until we got to the airport crossing. I left it there, not wanting to test that bad wye on the edge of town again. Besides, I was hungry and hurried to the Airport Lodge for a late lunch. If you go to Yakutat this year you can stay at the new Airport Lodge. And you’ll still be able to ride the “Trail Blazer” to the Situk River. But if you want to you’d better hurry. The Yakutat and Southern has been here for almost sixty years, but it won’t be around any more. (Alaska Sportsman, May, 1963) Ed-The Yakutat & Southern is still operating has far as I know. They appear in the latest copy of the Guide. Yakutat can be reached by air from Juneau on Pacific Northern Airlines. The fare from Juneau is $19.00 one way. YAKUTAT & SOUTHERN RAILROAD (Yakutat, Alaska) ROSTER: # 1 Heisler 1092 12½x 12 cyl. 33” dr. 28 tons 8/06 2tk geared # 2 Lima 1057 8/07 2-6-2 # Plymouth 4-wheel gas # Plymouth 4-wheel gas # Co. Shops (built up on Heisler trucks) B-B gas # Chevrolet rail-truck #1 built for A. H. Kneeland # - (Shelton, ) to Minard & Co. (Elma, Washington) to Elma Lbr. Co. “ to Buffelen Lbr. & Mfg. Co. # (Eagle Gorge Washington) sold to Libby, McNeil & Libby 3L for the Y&S in Jan. 1926 (bought thru O.W. Brown Locomotive & Supply Co., a Seattle dealer. #2 bought new from Lima. The Whitney Engineering Works, west coast Heisler dealer had the following to say about the #1 in Feb. 1926….”Will state that this locomotive was in very bad condition as you undoubtedly will know and same should be well overhauled before being put into service, and after it is thoroughly overhauled there is no reason why this locomotive should not give you as good service as any locomotive could that is second hand and it should do practically as good work as a new one”…

Misc. Notes: The Y&S was incorporated in 1903 by F.S. Stimson It was sold to Libby, McNeil & Libby in 1913. In 1951 it was again sold, to Bellingham Canning Co. this time. Loco #2 is reported in storage at Yakutat, the Chev truck is operating. There must have been an earlier loco of which I have no record..this would be first #1 which must have gone out of service when the Heisler was acquired. Something must have powered the road from its incorp. In 1903 until the #2 was bought new in 1907! JACK HOLST QUIZ How well do you know the reporting marks of the railroad of the West. Follow – are 20 common carrier railroad’s reporting marks. Fill in the correct names.

ABL ______LPN ______AMC ______MR ______BAP ______MVT ______CWR ______NN ______CSP ______NPT ______COP ______OCE ______CLC ______OPE ______CKSO ______PTS ______EN ______UO ______CCT ______YVT ______Score five points for each correct answer. Twenty five points is fair, fifty points is excellent. Seventy five points indicated you must have worked as a car toad. One hundred points indicated that you cheated and used an Official Equipment Register. Jack Holst

ANSWERS AFTER HOLIDAY TRAVEL ARTICLE. REPORT ON CHRISTMAS RAIL TRAVEL OUT OF PORTLAND By Miln Gillespie

Christmas 1965 rail travel out of was very heavy, with all passenger trains carrying additional cars, and many running with maximum consists. In comparison with the previous year, all lines would show increases, because the terrible floods which occurred during the 1964 Christmas season caused the curtailment of much holiday rail passenger service. In general, Christmas rail traffice held up favorably with that of Christmas 1963; the Portland-Seattle “pool line2 service was even heavier! Traffice was so heavy on these daily round-trip runs between Portland and Seattle that a number of trains operated with standees- at least for part of the distance. “Special Coach” short-limit fares are the same as the bus. This has resulted in an increase in Portland-Seattle train travel, and this is volume business where rail passenger transportation can show to advantage. Below is a “thumbmail sketch” of each carrier serving Union Station. GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY GN#459, an all-coach train, carried as many as 550 passengers on one trips between Portland and Seattle (maximum capacity), as did its counterpart, GN #460. SP&S #2 (EMPIRE BUILDER)-normal off-season consist, 1 chair car and 1 sleeper Portland to Chicago. From Dec. 14 th, thru Jan. 1st, carried an additional chaircar Portland to St. Paul. Normal off- season consist for local traffic from Portland to Spokane is one or two 54-seat chair cars. Dec. 23-24, four chair cars carried to Spokane. Dec. 30-31 and Jan. 1st five local chair cars were carried to Spokane. S&S #4 (Western Star)-normal off-season consist, one SP&S 54-seat chair car to Spokane. During the holiday season as many extra chair cars as needed each night. Many coach passengers who couldn’t get reservations on the “Builder” used the “Star”. There were days when the “Western Star” our of Seattle (GN#28) had as may as 8 chair cars to Spokane; the majority of these continued on to either St. Paul or Chicago. Some, which unloaded local passengers at Spokane, were refilled with SP&S #4 passengers from Portland enroute East. (The “Western Star” was reported to have operated in two sections on numerous occasions during the Christmas season, from Seattle, Ed.) NP#407-408 operated with more than capacity (ie, some standees part way) between Portland and Seattle. Every available was added, up to tonnage limitation. SP&S #2 (North Coast Ltd)-normal off- season consist, one chair car and one sleeper Portland to Chicago. Extra chair car added Dec. 14th thru Jan. 4th, Portland to Chicago, to equal summer consist. SP&S #4 (Mainstreeter) Normally, off season, no through chair cars carried from Portland. “Mainstreeter” passengers ride SP&S local chair car to either Pasco or Spokane. From Dec. 15th through Jan 2nd a thorough “Mainstreeter” chair car was operated from Portland to St. Paul, the same as is done during the summer tourist season. Many coach passengers to intermediate NP points who were unable to get reservations on the “North Coast Ltd” too the “Mainstreeter.” SOUTHERN PACIFIC ESPEE’s one daily passenger train (THE CASCADE) in and out of Portland hauled capacity loads during the holiday season. Below is a comparision of normal off-season consists with the 22 car maximum consist which ran on certain days of very heavy travel. Consist is shown from head end to rear end. No extra sections of THE CASCADE were operated, as SP was able to take care of everyone wishing to travel south by rail. Holiday rail travel cont.-

NORMAL OFF-SEASON CONSIST MAXIMUM 22-car HOLIDAY CONSIST 2 head-end cars 2 head-end cars 4 chair cars 10 chair cars 3 cars (Triple-unit Diner) 3 cars (Triple-unit Diner) 1 car (Automat refreshment car) 1 car (Automat refreshment car) __3__sleepers______6_sleepers______13 cars TOTAL 22 cars TOTAL

SPOKANE, PORTLAND & SEATTLE RAILWAY SP&S passengers consists covered under Great Northern and Northern Pacific headings. On December 23rd, SP&S#2 had a consist of epic proportions with the additional local chairs and both EMPIRE BUILDER AND heavy consists plus local SP&S sleeper “MT. Hood, plus two SP&S diners. Diner #405, now named “Columbia” and an Empire Builder colors was placed mid-train. Newly-acquired SP&S diner #406, the “Willamette” was placed at the rear of the train. The “Willamette” a stainless steel diner purchased from the ex-“Texas Special” consist of the M*K*T Railroad, now sports new SP&S passenger color scheme of stainless steel with a yellow letter board and window panel. UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD UP#106 (City of Portland)-no second sections operated. Normal off-season consist is 4 chair cars and 3 sleepers, plus head-end cars, dome diner, dome lounge car, and Buffet-lounger car. Christmas holiday period consist increased to 8 chair cars and 4 sleepers on especially busy travel days plus the usual dome diner, dome lounge car and Buffet-car, and head end cars. Some extra chair cars carried on #106 through Jan, 9th. UP#18 (Portland Rose)-Normal consist is one Pullman, Portland to Denver, 3 chair cars Portland to Kansas City, Buffett-lounge car, La Grande, Ore. To Green River, Wyo; and head-end cars. On Dec. 21-22-23, UP #18 carried one extra sleeper, Portland to Denver. During the holiday season #18 carried 6 chair cars (three extra cars) UP #457-458 carried maximum-consist capacity loads between Portland and Seattle. During the 1965 holiday season, Union Pacific made a very concentrated effort to attract college student to train travel. This resulted in a healthy increase in college-student coach travel on Union Pacific trains. Now, why would a non-railfan college student travel home by rail? There are the usual factors-Safety (the safest form of transportation); Economy (much cheaper than even air coach); Speed (Premier trains are faster than bus travel); Comfort (Delus railroad chair cars, especially “day-nite” leg-rest seats offer much more leg room than a bus for even air-coach seats. There is, however, another important factor, which I shall call the “social factor”. A holiday-time train, like a cruise ship, is filled with happy and fun-loving people. On the train there is “room to roam.” College boys, walking through cars enroute to the diner or lounge car, cannot help but notice the attractive college girls also traveling home for the holidays. Pretty co-eds are not unaware of good-looking college. The lounge car and diner are true social center, and “boy meets girl” can easily become reality. Train travel can be fun! ANSWERS TO OUR REPORTING MARK QUIZ ABL-Alameda Belt Line CLC-Columbia & Cowlitz OCE-Ore. Calif. & Eastern AMC-Amador Central CKSO-Condon, Kinzua & Southern BAP-Butte, Anaconda & Pacific EN-Esquimalt & Nanaimo OPE-Ore. Pacific & Eastern CWR-California Western LPN-Longview, Portland & Northern MTV-Mt. Vernon Terminal CSP-Camas Prairie MR-McCloud River PTS-Port Townsend CCT-Central California Traction NN-Nevada Northern UO-Union RR. Of Oregon COP-City of Prineville NPT-Northern Pacific Terminal YVT-Yakima Valley Transit Vancouver Wharves (BC) are rumored to have an order two diesels from England to replace the Shays currently used. The Shays are owned by Railway Appliance Reseach Ltd. The #115 is ex Canadian Forest Products and the #114 is former #5 of Western Forest Industries. The Pacific Coast Terminal locomotives are still stored on M&B trackage on Vancouver Island. The owner is still trying to put them into operation. Canadian Pacific Royal Hudson #2860 is still at CP’s Vancouver roundhouse. The Vancouver Railway Museum Association is still trying to complete the fund raising project totalling $7,900. They have most of the money now and anyone desiring a membership can write to VRMA at Box 2860, Vancouver 3, British Columbia. Its only a dollar a year and this money goes toward the purchase and the establishment of a railway museum in Vancouver. The British locomotive “Dunrobin” and a coach were purchased by a Victoria fellow have been sold to the provincial government for $15,000. The engine was repaired at “Pacific Coast Terminals” and I understand it was steamed up a few weeks ago. This equipment is bound for Fort Steele near Nelson. A provincial museum is being established there and the railway equipment will play an important part. This is the only info I have but it makes me mad that they pick an English loco over an American type. This West Coast Railway Association is running a trip over the PGE to Kelley Lake on Saturday February 26th. The fare is $10.50 with meals at $4.25. The PGE has cut back passenger service to Lillooet since trainmen walked off “sick” due to a “grievance”. Everything is settled now but the PGE still has not reinstated service (as of Jan. 5th). The PGE plans to operate only one train a day out of North Vancouver (as it is now) but there would be now individual southbound train. The northbound would turn at Lillooet and return to North Van. This would eliminate crews and RDC maintenance. Bob Gevaert

THE TRAINMASTER PO. BOX 8853 Portland, Oregon 97208

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